Corporate Governance and Performance

This paper studies the impact of the structure and elements of corporate governance on company performance. A large number of studies on this subject show interest in the international community. At the moment, there are still no precise conclusions about the direction of the relationship between the elements of corporate governance and company performance. Authors in the world community continue to obtain controversial results in this area. To conduct this study, a sample of 58 Russian non-financial companies for the period 2014-2018 is used. Two metrics are used to measure corporate performance: return on assets and Tobin’s Q. The author obtained the results of negative influence of independent directors on Tobin’s Q, which is new to Russian companies, and the positive effect on the return on assets. The influence of female directors was not confirmed. The assumptions about non-linear relationship between the size of the board and the Tobin’s Q were confirmed, whereas the impact on return on assets showed to be insignificant. The study also proposed that a high proportion of shares in the hands of the first major shareholder has a negative influence on the performance of companies. In general, the results of the work indicate a significant impact of corporate governance on performance.